Milford's baseball team suffered its first setback of the season following an 8-0 loss to St. Elizabeth's on a sunny, but chilly, Tuesday afternoon at Canby Park in Wilmington. The Bucs came into the contest with lots of confidence built from a successful 2-0 start, but couldn't rally against a strong pitching effort by the Viking hurlers.

"Sometimes you just have to tip your hat to your opponents, we just didn't help ourselves today," said Milford coach Nick Brannan. "We made four errors in the field and we struck out too many times today," he said.

The Vikings scored four runs in the bottom of the second off Bucs' senior starter Philip Berry. That would prove to be enough offense for the victory. St. E's scored one run in the each of the next two innings, then capped the win by scoring twice in the bottom of the sixth off junior Tanner King. The Vikings finished with a total of ten hits on the day, with one double and two triples for good measure.

Meanwhile, St. E's pitchers seem to withstand the cold conditions better than Milford, as Jared Harrison and Zack Cooney combined on a two hit shutout with a total of ten strikeouts. Offensively, David McTaggart went 3 for 4, and Jared Harrison was 2 for 2 for St. Elizabeth's.

"It's difficult to compete when you make a lot of mental mistakes, but it's only our first loss of the season, and I'm glad we got that out of the way early," said Brannan. "We have plenty of time to fix things, and we'll see how the team handles adversity in our next game," he said.

Milford will take its 2-1 record into today's home game against Laurel, then they will host Easton HS (MD) on Saturday at 11 a.m.

The Vikings are now 4-0 on the young season, including a 4-2 victory over defending state champion, St. Mark's. They will be participating in the Tiger Classic at A.I. DuPont HS in Greenville this weekend.